NEW META-MODEL DISTINCTION: Personalizing

Personalizing

Two distinctions from the list of the RET Cognitive Distortions do not seem to correspond to any of the Meta-Model distinctions. These make up the categories of known as personalizing and emotionalizing. Albert Ellis identified these as cognitive distortions in the way people process information when in stress or threaten by some danger.

Emotionalizing refers to using your emotions for gathering and processing information. In emotionalizing, you treat emotions as if they were facts. You then over-value emotions, take counsel of them, and treat them as accurate information gathering mechanisms rather than a reflection of how your values compare to how you perceive things.

Emotions actually describe a relationship—a relationship in your mind-body. Emotions emerge from, and reflect, the relationship between your model of the world and your experience of the world. The difference between these two subjective awarenesses is what you experience as an “emotion.” Think of the difference as a movement and position of a scale that weighs and compares model and experience.